by Rev. Lynne Hinton
Advent begins. This season of waiting needs not be waited for any longer. It is here. So, now we mark this time. And we wait.
How do you rate your ability to wait? Is the season of anticipation an opportunity for sitting still, for being exactly where you are, noticing what is going on around you? Or can you “wait” as I once watched Pastor TD Jakes demonstrate in a sermon as a servant serves? Tray in hand, one arm behind your back, bowed in submission.
The truth is, we probably don’t do either. We pick another brand of “waiting” altogether. We read a book, or work on a laptop, play games on our phone, using our “wait time” as another opportunity to be distracted from where we are, to be somewhere other than the waiting.
Perhaps we choose a different way of waiting this year. Maybe it would benefit our monkey minds just to sit in what feels like “mindless wander” but might actually be “mindfulness.” Perhaps we ask, ‘what is this place I am waiting? What am I even waiting for? How is it in my heart now that I am still and can listen?’
Or perhaps our waiting could involve serving, to learn a new way of humility, of surrender to someone else’s idea, to let go of our need to be recognized, honored, or served, and instead, “wait” on someone else.
If you’ve been in church for any length of time, you understand Advent as the waiting for Christ’s coming. And we change the liturgical colors and we light candles on a wreath. We sing songs of anticipation, we hear passages of hope; but our waiting gets filled up with new activities, more tasks, more busyness so that we find ourselves neither really serving others or being still. We just simply fill up this season like we do all the others.
You could do it differently, you know. Advent, I mean. You could choose this to be your season to be still, to listen to your heart, your body, to honor what is, not what you expect to come, to accept the liminal space of “not yet.”
I’d like to mark this time as slightly different than how I typically manage the month of December. I’d like this time to be more than writing the Christmas letter, getting all the cards mailed on time, buying gifts because this has become the acceptable way to say I love you.
I’d like to be still, to learn humility. I’d like not to have to distract myself when there are a few minutes before the next thing. I’d like to learn how to wait well.
I hope you learn it too.
